


with which to hear and to see

by 님 (nymmiah)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Collection, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Other, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Twitter Repost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymmiah/pseuds/%EB%8B%98
Summary: Collection of most of my twitter drabbles.
Relationships: Azem & Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Elidibus & Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch & Hythlodaeus
Kudos: 5





	1. emet-selch & azem: colours most maddening

**Author's Note:**

> These are mostly done as daily writing practice and character studies.

He unfurls, the grand release of shadows gathered, not unlike the blooming of a flower. Great wings of black span from wall to wall, his aether a miasmic flood that gushes from his form relentlessly.

His eyes, golden and bright, are distant at this time, fixed at a point beyond that they cannot see. It is of no matter; regardless of their lack of Sight, there is a marvel to behold in the intricacy of his aether as he manipulates it, his clawed hands tracing sigils into the air to draw forth whatever it is that he Sees.

They are breathlessly quiet as his countenance twists, eyebrows furrowed and eyes closing as he concentrates upon his magics. They can feel it; the swell and rise of his aether, the abyssal crush of his shadowed soul--

And as waves crash down upon the shore, so too does his very essence, rupturing seemingly space and time itself as something blooms betwixt his hands.

Azem gasps, all too aware that they have been granted the Sight for that split second: a colour incomprehensible, magnificent to behold and maddening to see.

Laughter most triumphant leaves Emet-Selch's lips, and that impossible colour fades in an instant.

"You Saw it, did you not?" He asks.

"How can you stand Seeing such things every day?" They ask in return, speechless. "How are you not driven mad by it?"

His eyes gleam.

"Did you forget so soon, my friend?" Emet-Selch replies. "You have only just called me mad a few bells ago."


	2. hythlodaeus: shade of a memory

His voice is quiet amidst the ruins, and he calls quietly the name of the one who has created him. There is no answer, though he had not expected one. Instead, he keeps his eyes afixed to the tumultuous sea that outstretches before him and all things, an endless myriad of a thousand thousand colours--a thousand thousand souls.

"Hades," he whispers again, and he can see how the waves writhe and part.

And there, within the depths of the Underworld, can he see the merest glimpse of a colour most arresting in its deep and impossible hue.

"There you are," he cooes, reaching forth into this sea of souls. The colours part before his hand. "My dear, foolish old friend... Are you well?"

There is no response that he can hear, but Hades' abyssal soul shudders beneath the crushing depths of the souls atop of him.

He can see how his friend disappears into the depths of the ocean of aether once more, but he lowers his hand in lieu of insisting that Hades come forth.

There is much left to say. However, he is but a shade of a memory of the man he is supposed to be.

Mayhap Hades shall find the soul of the true Hythlodaeus within the Underworld, and he shall say the quiet words that roil within his chest with sincere and unmanufactured emotion.

The shade smiles behind his mask, and turns.


	3. krile: upon g'raha

There is something so intrinsically attractive about someone who cares so deeply for another being. However, there is a thin boundary between an admirable quality and one that alarms instead.

His love is near-obsessive, born from brief and singular moments in a time long since passed. He has not seen them in over a century, carries memories that have dried and aged over the endless summers that surely have become distorted as parchment pages do beneath the sun.

Is this something to be praised? Is this something to treasure?

Regardless, let it not be misunderstood: he is a creature of tenacity and loyalty and those are qualities that should be faulted not. It is the fervour with which he expresses these traits that are worrisome.

There is most certainly a discrepancy between his view upon them, and theirs returned. I should hope that they will result in naught and that mine imaginations and my thoughts remain merely that: fantastical and unreal.


	4. runar: master matoya

She is enchanting. She is the cool embrace of the night, the scintillating glow of the stars above. He loves her, dearly, and he cannot help but wish to express it in all of the different manners of the world, by prose and by act, by gift and by design.

He knows not her name, unworthy of such intimate privilege, but he knows the brightness of her eyes and the quickness of her mind, the daring grin upon her lips as she is challenged thrice over by whatever had captured her attentions that day.

If only he could be brave enough to close the gaping trench that yet separates their hearts...


	5. warrior of light & thancred: on minfilia and ryne

Is it not something to be celebrated? We have fulfilled all that she has intended to fulfil, and you may now lay to rest the demons with whom you yet wrestle.

Ah, I see.

Put a smile on your face, Thancred, and feel joy in lieu of sorrow. She is still there though we have departed; one day we shall surely see her once more, and it is then that you may share with her the words that yet linger in your mind.

She is safe, made safer by your own actions when you were yet able, and she will ever grow stronger with your touch upon her life.

You have brought to her core the steel with which you have imbued Minfilia--the first, the one that yet remains in your heart. Such fortitude is not easily lost, and she has found herself with your guidance.

If it shall settle your heart, mayhap I shall return to the First in your stead? Ha! Floundering finally, Thancred? I should think she would be most glad to know that you yet hold her in your thoughts, rather than substituting her with drink.


	6. elidibus: crumbling, ever departing

The earth crumbles into lifeless sand as he buries his fingers into the dirt upon which he lays. He breathes, eyes closed to all around him, and he tastes ash upon his tongue; bitter, acrid, hateful--this is not the world which he loves. The blue of the sky above is not the blue that he has promised those who have departed.

It is a pale facsimile, a brittle rendition of leached colour and distorted shapes that will inevitably and eventually break under its own weight.

The Sundering has left them numbering only three from once-millions.

How have they come to this? It surely must be on him, the last and the least of the Elidibus. He, after all, was and always will be the Emissary. It was his duty to unify their peoples. It was his duty,

His damnable,

Duty


	7. esteem: burning bright

It is in the unknown depths of their soul that they reside, seething amongst the roiling shadows that ever grow with each day. Even as the light grows within, so too does the dark, for the brightest light casts the deepest of shadows.


	8. ryne & thancred: a burden

Sometimes, she feels as if she is being punished for an act that she had had no choice but to commit. She did not ask him to deliver her from her cage in Eulmore, and she did not ask to be born as Minfilia. Nevertheless, he treats her begrudgingly, as if she is a burden, and...

She cannot just become inexistent by willing it, no matter how much Thancred might wish for it.


	9. urianger: duty

The pen falleth from his hand to rest upon the wooden mien of the table before him, ink pooling from its crack'd tip and staining its veins and whorls a deep blue.

He can hear the wretch'd laughter outside of the mirthful nymphs that call Il Mheg their home, the gleeful calls of beings to whom time remaineth ever inconsequential.

He is, as he is ever condemned to be, alone. His is a lonely path; Moenbryda had been right as she had ever been when she had remarked that one long-ago night that his choices would leave him bereft of all.

What is he to do? He is naught but a man attempting to fight against the fate given unto them by their gods, naught but a man who toileth endlessly to change the future that awaiteth them. Mayhap they, the companions for whom he bleedeth and leadeth, would never understand.

That, too, he shall make inconsequential. He cannot be swayed from his path by his emotions, for to be swayed is to allow the tapestry of their destiny to be made as intended by the Ascians: painted in the colours of their departed souls bought by lethal light.


	10. azem & hythlodaeus: garish

"--Rather garish, is it not?" They asked, holding aloft the mask with a frown apparent upon their lips. "You would think that they would have gone with a far less… conspicuous colour, considering how we so often preach upon the collective and to be unified in our manner and presentation."

"One would think that you would be far more reverent of the Convocation, and gracious of your new title," Hythlodaeus replied, his smile widening as the new Azem scoffed and placed the mask aside into the folds of their robes.


	11. elidibus & emet-selch: faith

Emet-Selch, he thought, had always carried out his job exceedingly well. The towering spires above his head, crystalline and true. It was the exact image of the city for which they had all yearned. Truly, only a man of his talents could have made so faithful a Creation as this.

His talents could, perhaps, be explained by the fact that Emet-Selch was centuries older than he, mayhap even millennia older. It lent to him a certain gravitas that he ever struggled to emulate. There was something wholly dichotomous in the mannerisms of the man:

He was lackadaisical and theatrical, slothful and yet gravid with solemn dedication--the man remained ever a mystery to him despite their aeons of acquaintanceship.

As it was, it was unsettling to walk through the bones of fair Amaurot. Her ribs were picked clean, and her spine fully exposed to his eyes; she had not her flesh, nor her skin. She was an ancient hollow being, dead and merely awaiting for her life to return anew.


	12. ardbert: failure

He sways back and forth from wakefulness and nothingness; both are equally as terrifying. Time is inconsequential to him, for he can do naught but observe, to watch how the land curdles in the wake of all of his deeds, all of his damned failures,

A Warrior of Light? What use is that when he has flooded his godsdamned star with it and cursed it with inevitable death? He is the root of everything wrong, he is the sickness that must be expunged from the earth, but he can't do even that.


	13. emet-selch: upon reCreation

He had been deliberate to think not of the people he had once known, the countenance of those that had given themselves to their Lord--but as all men did, he had given into his weakness but once. His dearest friend; he could picture not their fair city without him.

Amaurot would not be Amaurot without Hythlodaeus, loyal and foolish he. In the end, Hythlodaeus had become the sole shade with a name, the sole shade that would be given the faintest spark of something more than a hollow existence.

He stayed his hand from aught else, reluctant to destroy this painfully inadequate recreation of a soul that had once burned as brightly as flame.


	14. emet-selch: time and time

Creating the empires time and time again, not solely for Zodiark but also because of his insatiable need to create and to improve and to augment, to bring to these fragmented nonbeings enlightenment as they once knew it.

They are ever disappointments, he hates everything he has ever built in this sundered time, for it will never measure up to Amaurot as he remembers it, as he loves it--

But through the ages, he is ever startled when brilliance shines through these shades, when he spies for that split second something that belonged to a time long past, a time yet to return--and it lights within a raging flame to continue anew and see perfection once more.

He is the Architect and he has been charged with Creation, and he will Create over and over until he is spent and his body crumbles and the Underworld takes him.


	15. emet-selch: through the winding ways

In Amaurot,

There's a pale gold light streaming through the clouds where the sun hides and it's gleaming off the crystalline windows of their spiral towers.

There's the quiet murmurs of the city slowly growing quieter as night comes, and the very walls and tines of this city breathe beneath his hand where he presses it against the stone.

With his own eyes can he see the lives that had lived and are living and will live in fair Amaurot.

How else could he describe this other than perfect intimacy?

He walks down these ancient trodden paths and he knows its every ilm, for he has learnt it with his hands and feet and eyes and his very soul. He would give up everything, he realises, for this city to ever remain as it is: perfect and radiant and proud.


	16. aymeric: his father's son

He is illegitimised, unspoken for, and yet everyone with eyes can see to whom his hands belong.

It is the nature of Ishgard to punish sons for their father's deeds, and Aymeric bows under the yoke of his father's shame.

His father's name has never been spoken by anyone; rather, it needs not be said aloud, when his eyes are mirrored upon his father's face, and he stands as tall as his father once did.

He is the embodiment of the Holiest's sins, and it is yet a wonder that he could be so blessed.

It is still a marvel to stop and recall that he, above all others, was wanted by his father--the one who raised him, that kindly lord of House Borel--despite his unvirtuous nature.

Halone, he reasons, watches over him for some unknown reason in spite of his sin.


	17. the warrior of light & emet-selch: remembrance

Remember us, he said.

But how can one remember when they lose all of their memories as swiftly as sand would slip from one's fingers? They are empty, a vessel for Light alone.

They try, they write down everything that they can remember of the man that had asked them to remember--but the Light they carry burns out everything that it deems unneeded for them to complete their duty.

For all their great efforts, all they are left is a gaping emptiness within their chest when they try to recall the face of that man they had defeated all of those moons ago.

Soon enough, they shall forget even that man's final request, and he shall fall into obscurity as with the rest of his people who had once lived as they did.


	18. urianger: place of distinction

How shocked had been I to find that dictation had a place of distinction within the society of Amaurot!

It is a curious sentiment in this world of to-day, wherein formal dictation and orators rarely find their place in society. This particular profession seemeth to continue living solely within the hallow'd halls of enlighten’d Sharlayan.

What else hath been lost to time and Sundering? What culture hath fallen into obscurity as the aeons pass and the world changeth under Hydaelyn's watch?

One could not help but wonder over that which had been the heart of Amaurot, this utopic city of ancients.

**Author's Note:**

> Winks and shamelessly promotes the Azem fanzine, The Sun's Journey, that I'm modding @ [FFXIVAzemZine](https://twitter.com/FFXIVAzemZine). Applications are closed, but please await future news!
> 
> I'm also found on Twitter @ [nymmiah](https://twitter.com/nymmiah), where I occasionally upload sketches and ideas.


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